Embodiments of the present invention relate to computer software, and more particularly relate to techniques for customizing aspects of a metadata-driven software application.
Software applications are often customized to meet the needs of specific customers. This is particularly true in the field of enterprise software, where each organization may have a unique set of business requirements and data integration needs. Customizations generally fall into one of several categories, including site customizations (i.e., customizations that apply to all users of a deployment), group customizations (i.e., customizations that apply to specific groups or categories of users), and user customizations (i.e., customizations that apply to a single user).
In recent years, an increasing number of enterprise applications are being built using a metadata-driven approach. These applications (referred to herein as metadata-driven applications) are structured such that aspects of their content, behavior, and/or appearance are specified via metadata rather than program code. Generally speaking, the customization of metadata-driven applications amounts to customizing their corresponding metadata.
According to one known approach for customizing a metadata-driven application, a customer may make direct modifications to the application's base metadata and thereby tailor the application to its needs. However, this technique is problematic for several reasons. For example, if an upgrade or patch modifying the base metadata is released, the customer must expend considerable time and effort in re-implementing and retesting the modifications against the new version of the metadata. This process must be repeated for each new release. Further, this approach cannot be used to implement conditional customizations (i.e., customizations that apply to specific users or groups of users), which generally require modifications to the application code.
According to another known approach, the application developer may implement predefined customizations directly in the application metadata/code. However, this greatly increases the complexity of the application, resulting in higher development and maintenance costs. In addition, since the number of predefined customizations is necessarily limited, this approach cannot address the diverse customization requirements of all customers. Although the application developer may implement a mechanism for allowing customers to create their own customizations, this further increases application complexity and cost.